I ran across this today, and it’s a nice contrast to some of the 1930s vintage automobile factory videos we’ve looked at here today. The spread of automation is relentless, and Elon Musk is talking about designing a drastically faster and almost fully automated plant for the upcoming Tesla Model Y. But here’s short ride down the assembly line in the current state of the art.

Poor old Roger Smith; he had the right idea back in the 80s, but his efforts at automating GM’s plants were a bit ahead of their time. The paint robots ended up painting each other as much as the cars, along with other snafus.

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I was watching automated car painting just yesterday on utube in a 60s BMC factory they also had two guys there to get the bits the robots couldnt, hardly new tech in China a lot more advanced but not new, recent Falcon cars imported from OZ still have parts unprotected by paint as the robots cant reach them fortunately for the customer any rust appearing is covered by warranty.

I was watching a build film from Opel Rüsselsheim where humans were still painting the door jambs and edges of doors, while robots did the easy parts. A film of VW Wolfsburg showed robots that opened the doors so robots could paint the door edges and jambs.

The comments in the video show that there is still a ratio or more than 2 humans per robot per shift. This seems very similar to what I saw in Germany back in 2003 at Audi, VW, and Mercedes. Only Porsche was more hand-labor (but still much less than in prior decades)

Most if not all of the stamping, forming, holding panels in place for welding, welding and painting is all done by robots at those factories now. There are very few humans around in those parts of the factories.

I’d venture that any unpainted areas are not that way because the robot can’t reach but because they are not visible or unimportant to the consumer and it saves the manufacturer money by not using paint (such as under the headliner). The areas are still subjected to the primer bath. You can see something similar on some cars that don’t have the inside of the hood or trunk clearcoated for example, instead it’s just a dull finish coat of paint (if even that).

Glass is all put in by robot pulling from a large stack of windshields for example. One robot locates the car via laser and applies a bead of the black glue stuff around the windshield frame and another robot lifts up and places the glass in the correct position. My favorite robot at the Ingolstadt Audi factory was the one that picked up a tissue and wiped the nozzle of the black glue stuff robot every single time and then discarded the tissue in order to get a new one for the next cycle. It reminded me of an older lady dabbing her mouth after eating a cookie with her tea…

Humans were used more later in the process to install the interior, wheels, and major sub-assemblies such as the front fascia complete with bumper, grille, lights, and radiator.

Wolfsburg Mk V Golf build film, showing robots opening the doors and hoods for the paint robots. Robots install the instrument panels, another job I saw people still doing in the Opel Rüsselsheim video….I would get more out of it if I understood German…

Jim’s tissue wielding nozzle wiping robot is a new one on me though.

Interestingly, I see a lot more handwork in Mexican plant build films. No doubt a function of robots costing the same as in Europe, but people only costing $3/hr.

Fiat 500s at Toluca. Daimler invested a pile of money updating this plant, yet, compared to Wolfsburg, there are people all over the place. People place and secure the instrument panel, people install the windshield and rear window. This film doesn’t show the paint process tho.

Steve, I assume that Daimler renovated the plant because they “owned” Chrysler at the time.

Yes. Daimler put in a pretty sophisticated flexible manufacturing system in 2006 so Toluca can build as many as three different platforms with minimal disruption. Toluca is now building the 500, Dodge Journey and Jeep Compass.

They were among the most beautiful cars built in the 60’s, no question about it. And the Wixom assembly plant had pretty good quality control for the day. Our 1965 Thunderbird was one of the best built cars my Dad ever owned.

Thanks! I never ran into that on YouTube. I owned a ’62 Lincoln as my daily driver for about ten years, until 2003. There must be ten times more worker hours in one of those cars than in the Ford at the modern plant. They also weren’t engineered to go together as easily and of course not designed in terms of robot assembly. This of course is why the campaign boasts (among all the other stupid ones) by the current president* were stupid – making every car in the US would employ a tenth of the workers it did back in the Goode Olde Days.

And the Wixom plant was pretty new, from April 1957. Interestingly, it made Mark II’s (body on frame) and then the 1958 on Lincolns and Thunderbirds (unit bodies intil the later 60’s). Town Cars were the last thing made there. I imagine they made the other last body on frame cars, the closely related Crown Vics, there too.

I went on a tour of the MINI plant in Oxford a while ago. Much of this is therefore similar, although we did not see the paint process (too much to do to make it safe and practical to do so).

3 points that come to mind immediately – the ratio of workers to robot – MINI had 1000 robots and 150 people on body in white assembly alone, for a car a minute, the welding robots detected when their electrodes were worn and replaced them themselves and the logistical complexity of the just in time mode and the model, engine, colour, trim variations and how that was managed was very impressive.

If you get a chance to go to such a plant, take it up. But they won’t let you film it!